Random's Birthday
by Wacko the Sane
Summary: Guess what? Yes, it's Random's birthday. With Arthur she travels to Milliways and generally get up to a whole sort of general MishMash. Aspects and characters from radio series as well as book. Set during Mostly Harmless R
1. Random's Birthday

**Random's Birthday**

His hand clasped the knife firmly as he began to slice the soft white bread, tenderly baked with only the best ingredients.

"Fuck! Not again! Why can I not cut a decent slice of bread anymore?" Arthur Dent stared down at the massacred loaf, sighing, he tore it up and placed it in an old sack; perhaps he could feed it to the pikka birds later.

An anxious boy peered round the door, he watched Arthur yank off his apron and hang it on the wall. Having the intimating feeling of someone watching him, Arthur spun round.

"What?"

"Pl...please Mr Sandwich Maker, sir - but, but, what about my sandwich?"

"What?" Arthur said again, this time bemused rather than annoyed. "Oh that... never mind, um, could you possibly just tidy this up for me? There's a good boy. God, I need some tea..." Arthur looked up, already he could hear the shuffling of feet and stones being kicked across the road, a slouched figure wandered up to the door.

"Random! How are you?" Arthur dropped his false cheeriness immediately when he saw his daughter's sullen expression as she walked across the room, dripping with the heavy rain from outside. She raised her eyebrows at the huge grin still stuck on Arthur's face and wondered why on Earth (well on Lamuella at any rate) she had to be related to this primitive ape descendant carbon based life-form.

"I thought you went to see Old Thrashbarg?"

"I did," groaned Random,

"And?"

"He just went on about Bob and stuff all the time, so I got fed up and went away."

Arthur knew that when she said 'went away' she hadn't done it calmly, the young boy who was nervously washing Arthur knives had also realised this, and seeing the mad glint still in Random's eye bolted out the door leaving one of Arthur's treasured bread knives clattering to the floor. Random crouched down and began to juggle the knife between her fingers, Arthur's eyes followed the movement of the knife like a pendulum, the tension tightened inside him like a screw until he yelled suddenly.

"Happy Birthday Random!" Random dropped the knife and stared at her insane father in bewilderment whilst he skipped around the room.

"What? I don't have a birthday, I though mum told you..."

"Everybody should have a birthday once in a while; just to brighten up their day. Come on let's get out of here!" Arthur grabbed Random by the arm and tugged her out of the door whilst doing an odd sort of dance with his feet moving to the rhythm of Beethoven's Fifth. The effect was slightly ruined by the huge rain cloud above them doing the kind task of soaking them to the skin.

Despite this embarrassing journey through the streets, Random actually cheered up a bit; for once something strange and exciting was happening in this hellhole, and she was involved in it. Arthur meanwhile yearned more than ever for the regularity and normality he had known on Earth, but there was no going back now, and besides he could never make good sandwiches with the gloomy face of his daughter glaring over his shoulder.

"Random, have you got a Thumb?" Random opened the pocket on the inside of her coat and pulled out a small black ball covered in buttons all different shapes and sizes. She turned it on and a thick antenna popped up, looking uncannily like the thumb on her own hand. Puzzled she handed it to her father.

"No you take it, I never got the hang of using those things. Right, can you call us a cab?" Arthur looked hopefully at his daughter who after a few seconds of button pressing and knob tweaking announced,

"Well the sub-etha signal's not that great this far out from the major transmitters, but I spanned the waves and there should be one from something called 'Slartibartfast's Super Service Ships', sounds a bit odd I know, but they were the only one I could get." To her surprise Arthur Dent smiled at this piece of information, she thought it sounded a disaster already; but then she'd travelled on state-of-the-art ships all her life, controlled by professionals who could travel both time and space without so much as a jolt.

Suddenly there was a loud stutter of a malfunctioning exhaust and a large black shape appeared in the sky ahead of them, as it bobbed closer Arthur let out a yelp of shock; it was a London cab. Random looked scornfully on this odd spaceship and even more when the window rolled down and she saw who was driving it. He was tallish, elderly and quite frail – not so much with age, but exhaustion. His worn face peered down on the them, a kind smile stretched across his face.

"Earthman! And...Earthgirl! Wonderful, wonderful; you're my first customers!" Slartibartfast climbed out and opened the door of the back seats, beckoning them in. Random stared uncertainly at the open door but after a shove from her father, fell through it and was followed by Arthur. Before they'd even had time to sit down the engines began to roar and they were thrown to the floor as the cab jolted into action.

"I can see why we're his first customer," Random muttered under her breath, but not so quiet that Arthur couldn't hear her.

So as not to draw attention to his insolent daughter Arthur began to speak very loudly, "Slartibartfast, it's great to see you; how have you been? And how did you get this cab?"

"Oh I've had this for ages... picked it up whilst with the Starship Bistromath, just caught my eye you know." Slartibartfast beamed at them, "So where do you want to go?"

Arthur's eyes widened, in his madness he had completely forgotten to think of a place to go, so he repeated the name of a place that he knew could be fun, and also he wouldn't have to pay the bill; "Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the Universe." Random, turned to her father, many times she had heard her mother speak about that place, after all it was an astrophysicist's Mecca.

"Right then Earthman, and seeing as you're my first customer and my friend you won't have to pay the 749 351 767 502 515 437 000 Altairian Dollars I would normally charge for a flight spanning so much distance and time." He pushed a few buttons and cranked a few levers, additions that Arthur Dent had certainly never seen in your average London cab, and they shot off with such a force that Random's head knocked against the back of Slartibartfast's seat. She was out cold for the next 37 Earth minutes.

**A/N: Hope you enjoyed that, very random and eccentric, but hey what else do you expect from Wacko the Sane? Milliways coming up, plus everybody's favourite robot. Please review.**


	2. Milliway's The Restaurant at the End of...

**Milliways – The Restaurant at the End of the Universe**

The cab drew up alongside a gleaming black limoship, Arthur and Random stepped out on the platform. Arthur lent through the front window and thanked Slartibartfast, he led Random to a large transparent tube. They floated gently upwards to the moving catwalk that traversed across the huge car-park. They walked past a long concrete wall, with over fifty doors, providing lavatory facilities for the fifty major lifeforms. At the end of the wall was a large collection of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporters.

_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ has this to say on the subject of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporters.

_Take the stairs._

"Hello, I am to be your elevator to the entrance to Milliways, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I've been designed to take you, patron of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe to the dining room and bar. Your service shall be swift and pleasurable." The elevator simpered, it's voice oozing with sweetness.

"Er, Hello." Arthur was still unable to get used to the talking objects manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

"We want to go up now please." Random, who had had much more experience in these things than her father, immediately took an authoritarian tone. "Just up, and you don't need to talk to us; we can provide our own conversation."

"Good afternoon, Sir, Miss. Do you have a reservation?" A very tall muddy orange waiter appeared at the doors to the bar ahead of them. 

"No, but can we get a table?" Arthur looked uneasily at the mottled orange skin.

"Of course, follow me, or would you like a drink first?"

Arthur went to the bar and bought a jynnan tonnyx and a Wodalk fruit juice.

The waiter looking scornfully at Arthur's buttered trousers led them to the giant dome in the centre of the restaurant complex. It sparkled and shimmered, it glittered and gleamed; every possible surface was covered in jewels, shells, tiles, gold leaf and glitter. Random gaped open mouthed at the sight in front of her, nothing anyone could have told her would have prepared her for this, if this was just the setting what was the show like?

Arthur spotted two heads with an explosion of fair hair, four electric blue eyes and three arms waving in the air, and hid behind a table.

"Monkey man! Zappo!" it was too late, Zaphod Beeblebrox sauntered over too them, lowering his voice he stared at Random, "isn't she a bit young for you?"

"Zaphod," Arthur cleared his voice loudly, "meet my _daughter_, Random, Random this is Zaphod Beeblebrox, a...a _friend_ of mine."

Zaphod tried, and failed to do a sort three-handed handshake with Random instead he just winked cheekily,

"Well you're the last person I'd expect to meet here, where did you get to man?"

"It's a long story, and one I'd rather keep to myself, thank you very much." Arthur blinked to dissolve the image of Fenchurch in his mind.

"Well ,come and join our little group, and we can have a long chat." Leaving the confused waiter behind, Zaphod led them to a table near the middle of the room. Seated on one side was a short reptiliod in a tailed coat and top hat, next to him was a member of the same species, but obviously a female because of her voluptuous Santraginean fish scale dress. On the opposite side was a woman with large breasts falling out of far too revealing top, her face perfect (Frastran Dust Foundation no. 8), her eyelashes long and fluttering, her cheeks rosy red, and her lips large and sumptuous.

She very much reminded Arthur of a hooker, and also of three women he had met before when the Heart of Gold had landed on a planet which happened to have a large statue of himself dominating the skyline. The people on the planet happened to have been possessed by the urge to keep buying new shoes, to the extent that they evolved wings and left the torment of shoes forever. It was on this planet that Arthur Dent had met three archaeologists, all exactly the same. They were clones.

An escort agency had decided to clone six copies of a very attractive, talented young woman called Lintilla, unfortunately the cloning machine malfunctioned and started to created the next Lintilla whilst it was still halfway through creating the previous one. This meant that turning the cloning machine off would result in murder. When the problem was eventually solved (in a way that is not appropriate to mention) there were over 580 000 million Lintilla's.

This was a Lintilla obviously in her original job, and boy did Zaphod know this. Arthur put his hands over Random's eyes as Zaphod made use of his three arms.

**A/N: quite short, sorry, I am still thinking of future plots so bear with me, any ideas welcome...**


End file.
